a
sex offender registry in fossil records. how to embed a crime in
marrow. an offense that involves entering an unwanted object into
a space and a punishment which does the same. a ritual where the
bones of the expired offenders are marked with fire. expired or otherwise.
marrow that boils guilty. if marrow would sear true. a record that
looses all other records. a sex offender grading scale. when you
accomplish, you accomplish under offense. when you are a star, you
are a star under offense. your offense burns out your star. stardust
doesn’t mean magic has arrived. stardust means something has entered
your body which can never unenter. your body opens, is open, to hazard.
weak body. bad body. body unstable. body on scale of normal to. your
anonymous body is all over the internet. the internet will know who
you are. cares not to know. soon your body will be a memory embedded
only in cache. soon your body in the halls with the other bodies.
where you once passed the bodies that would place themselves in your
body. how to dismember a body without removing anything. how human
an unconscious body can or can not be. how humanity becomes anatomy
becomes a cellular telephone. how lucky that information sharing
can inform the holes in your evening. in your evening body. your
body which can’t remember the tilt of the sky. how many can witness
/ how many can tell. so when we burn your bones it will be illogical.
it will make us wince. we will breathe you so we can spit you out.
that you dare stand up anywhere. that you dare motivate. that you
forget / that you are afforded. that you should be sixteen and normal.
is normal. is touching. is entering uninvited. normal is shameful.
normal will invite you into its halls to be stared at in a pity way
but also in the way where you are unfamiliar broken wicked / that
your wickedness is contagious / that your brokenness is contagious
/ that your brokenness is ugly and that ugliness ought be put away

Work
by JJ Rowan has
previously appeared in West Wind Review, Horse Less Review, Everyday
Genius and
others. A chapbook, the selected jesus,
is now available from Shirt
Pocket Press.